27 September 2014

Five Centuries of Calvin (Part 1 of 2)

Recently I've been listening to some seminary lectures from
2009. This was a big year for Reformed people because it was the 500th
anniversary of the birth of John Calvin.

All over the country and all over the world there were conferences
celebrating Calvin and speaking of his influence in history and the shaping of
civilization. The lectures range in topic from theology to politics to
economics. Calvin truly is a titan in terms of civilizational influence.

Listening to the lectures I was forced to reflect on my own
experience and how I personally have changed and been transformed from a
Reformed stalwart to someone who has mixed feelings at best. I was taken back
to 1997 when I rode the train from Italy through the Alps and along the breathtaking
lake and finally arrived at the city of Calvin... though few think of it in
terms of Calvin anymore. I can't recall who said it, but at one point in time
it was pointed out that the future civilizational struggle would be between
Rome and Geneva. This was not referring to Protestantism and Roman Catholicism
but to the Enlightenment as represented by Geneva and Christianity. Geneva had
become the city of Rousseau and Voltaire and no longer associated with the
Calvinistic creed. Calvin's real cultural influence extended beyond his home in
Switzerland.

Visiting the city was for me a pilgrimage. I was in awe of
Calvin and visiting St. Peter's was a dream come true. I marvelled as I walked
the streets Calvin walked, visited the location of his house and stood before
the monument built to him and the other leaders of the Reformation.

I even recall thinking at the time that 2009 would be a big
year, an occasion for celebration and reflection. I wondered if there was some
possibility I would be able to come to the city that year.

Little did I realize by the time 2009 rolled around I would
no longer be a Calvin enthusiast. In fact I was already on that road in 1997
but I didn't yet know it.

At the time I would have nodded along with some of the
lectures that I'm listening to today. These lectures are mostly given by
Reformed people within the Reformed world. Now they strike me as misreading
history, exercises in question begging, and rather insulated and naive in their
views.

Calvin as the father of America and religious liberty!
Really?

There are senses in which that can be said to be true but in
many other ways it's actually very far from the truth. Calvin's Geneva did
influence the Republican ideal but I think you'll find that for most of the
so-called Founding Fathers the Republican ideals of Ancient Greece and Rome
were probably just as much of an influence.

I'm afraid there's a terrible tendency to give unwarranted
credit to the Pilgrims and Puritans in the formation of America. Their ideas
which few seem to realize are actually at odds played very little and perhaps
no part in the formation of ideas that led to 1776. The whole emphasis on the
Pilgrim iconography is really a child of late 19th century American
Romanticism and nationalist propaganda.

The other colonies which played just as large a part in the
formation of American Idealism... Quaker Pennsylvania and of course the greatest
of all, Virginia had nothing to do with Calvinist thought.

Even if it were true that Calvin somehow was the primary
cultural influence that led to the formation of the United States, it would be
nothing to celebrate and in no way would it provide Biblical vindication for
the American project.

Did Calvin help to birth the idea of the 'right of the
resistance' the notion that Christians can take up arms to counter tyranny?
Certainly he played a part in the development of this doctrine. Of course I
don't believe it to be a Christian doctrine in any shape or form. As far as the
rebels of 1776 I doubt very much that more than a handful of them had the
Genevan Reformer in mind when they took up their muskets to shoot at the soldiers
of the United Kingdom. Rebellion is itself as old as the hills and of course is
denounced in Scripture as the moral equivalent of witchcraft. It is a rejection
of Providence and an attempt to exercise dominion of the Divine Order.

As with all wars the motives of those involved are
complicated and indeed there were many Scots-Irish Presbyterians who had been
influenced by the long violent struggle in Scotland. The ideas behind these
struggles were certainly influenced by Calvin and Knox.

But as far as the leaders of the colonial revolt? Well
despite the delusions of David Barton and people like him you're not going to
find any Calvinistic influence in the Declaration of Independence. It and the
Constitution are dripping with Enlightenment thought.

Of course we might point out that Calvinism played no small
part in the development of the Enlightenment but I am confident these seminary
conferences and symposiums will contain no lectures on that topic!

I find it amazing that so many of these folks continue to
insist Calvin was some kind of champion of religious liberty. Most people would
say he represented an absolute opposite set of ideas.

The Middle Ages saw a long struggle between Church and
State. To speak that way is somewhat anachronistic but we can speak of the
aristocracy struggling against the power of the Papacy. Who would rule Europe?
Who would have the final say?

At times the kings seemed to be winning the day and during
other periods the popes were truly ascendant. The Reformation or more properly
the Magisterial Reformation was a triumph of the state.

Protestantism was midwived by the state, wedded to it and
protected by it. In fact by the second generation of the Reformation of which
Calvin was a part, the situation had become unacceptable. The state was
effectively running the Church.

Calvin struggled to free the Genevan church from the domination
of the city government. In this sense he stood for religious liberty. He wanted
a free Protestant church that was able to function outside of government
control and one that would be free from the talons of Rome.

Beyond that I think our modern notions of religious liberty
were not only foreign to him but anathema. Calvin did not believe in freedom of
conscience. Geneva was crawling with informers and thought-crime was a punishable
offence. Social pluralism an enshrined concept of the Constitution was a
concept Calvin did not hold to.

And neither do most of the lecturers I've heard.

Not all would go so far as to tear down pagan houses of
worship and imprison heretics... but most would like to see the state sanction
Christianity (at least in a broad sense) and help to foster and protect it.

This is not religious liberty. It may seem an improvement
when compared to Europe under Innocent III but it's not allowing true freedom
of conscience.

Not a few authors have pointed out that religious liberty in
the American sense is a child of two forces...

The Enlightenment,

and the Anti-Constantinian Christian movements represented
by Quakers, Anabaptists, Baptists, Moravians and other groups that explicitly
rejected political Christianity.

Colonial history had not always been kind to them and
certainly some of the founders had these groups in mind as they worked to
establish pluralist foundations.

Pluralism itself has generated much confusion. Theological
and Social pluralism must be distinguished. We must absolutely reject the
former with as much vigour as we embrace the latter. Some view this as
bifurcated thought. I would argue that it is Biblically necessary and without
it our very notion of the Kingdom is destroyed.

The Quakers are of course a bit more complicated and
represent a unique experiment in terms of Christian government in colonial
Pennsylvania. But it must also be said that they maintained a great deal of
integrity and when their hand was forced by the French and Indian War they
willingly gave up power as they realized they couldn't participate in the
creation and fostering of an army.

Unless you restrict religious liberty to the very narrow
sense of Church-State relations, Calvin is really beyond the scope of the
discussion. Our common notions of it today are actually in opposition to
Geneva. Even the Presbyterian Churches of the post-Revolutionary period
redacted the Confession's teaching on the magistrate. It no longer functioned
in an American context demonstrating the new America's incompatibility with the
Calvinistic mindset of the Confession's framers. America is not a child of
Calvinism.